Leading linguist professor Katica Kulafkova announced the publication of her thesis during the presentation of the four volume edition on the Macedonian language, published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The work is meant to represent an answer to the Bulgarian Academy and politicians who are increasing their calls that the Macedonian language is declared a mere western dialect of the Bulgarian language and not a separate Slavic language in its own right.

In the 19th century there were attempts to standardize a common language based on the Macedonian and the Bulgarian. Then scholar Parteniy Zografski proposed that the basis for it is the south-western Macedonian dialect which he considered more melodic than the Bulgarian. But the initiative was rejected by Bulgarian scholars. In the aftermath, with the abolition of the Archbishopric of Ohrid and the political and cultural domination by Greeks, and given the position European countries took toward the Macedonian national issue, it is understandable that attempts to move forward with the standardization of the Macedonian language were thwarted, Kulafkova says in her thesis.

Bulgaria raised the issue before the European Union, which is supposed to decide on when to open accession talks with Macedonia in the coming months. Abig issue for Bulgaria is to prevent the establishment of the Macedonian language as one of the official EU languages in the course of the negotiations. For her activism, Kulafkova was recently the target of allegations of “hate speech” on her part, prompting her to reduce her public appearances.